Storm Surge
by Dinogeek
Summary: With the largest storm on the record threatening to drown the city of London, Sherlock and Sally find that solving the murder might be the easy part. The hard part? Surviving.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Happy New Year everyone. I hope all goes well. This is a very random idea I had after I was reading about this massive storm that hit Britain in 1953 and so I decided to update the setting. I wrote it all in one day, but it ended up so long I split it into chapters, and since I have them all written alread, I'll probably post the rest of them today too. And yes, the science is correct. Because I'm a loser like that. Or a winner. Whatever. **

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><p>The storm surge began far out at sea, in the north Atlantic, but in a short time it had pushed its way to the British Isles. Scotland took the first brunt of it, hurricane-force winds slamming into the largely unprotected coast, felling trees and sinking ships, until an atmospheric depression pulled it away from the Scottish coast and to the south, down England's eastern coast, toward London and the Thames flood barrier.<p>

"Do you think it'll hold?" Sam swung around in her chair to face her boss. Robert was almost sixty years old, and for the last five of those years he had been her boss at the Storm Tide Warning Service station. He ran a hand through his grey hair and blew a breath out through his lips in a half-sigh.

"There's no reason it shouldn't," he responded. "They'll just have to raise the barrier and it should do the trick." He turned back to his own computer and checked on the latest set of predictions. Oh boy, were they in for the long haul. This was the largest storm surge in living memory, and it was fixing up to be the first really true test of the Thames flood barrier. The barrier was designed to stop exactly that kind of surge from out of the sea from coming into London and wreaking havoc.

"But they've been having trouble with them, though, haven't they?" Sam responded. "I was talking to their technical man earlier and he said there was some kind of fault in them they needed to fix." Robert frowned heavily. This was the first he'd heard of it, and that was not good.

"Why wouldn't they tell us about that? Do they not think that's the kind of thing we need to know?"

"Calm down, Rob, I'm sure they were going to tell us, they just…" Sam didn't really know why they hadn't bothered to alert the station that there was a potential problem with the flood barrier. She could only suppose that they didn't think it was necessary so long as the higher-ups had all the facts to put together. But still, it was slightly galling to figure out halfway through a potential disaster that it might get far, far worse very suddenly. "I'm sure they know what's going on and how to fix it. Besides, we still have at least three hours before the surge gets here. That's certainly enough time to figure out what's going on. And even if they can't fix the problem, we can just have the higher-ups call for an evacuation." Robert shook his head slowly; Sam's optimism wasn't contagious, and Robert had seen a lot in his fifty nine years.

"Even if they can't fix it and we tell them to call for an evacuation, by the time it gets through the ranks and the order gets out the storm surge will almost be here; to get even a chance of success they'd have to approve and start it right now. Call your friend the technical man again; see if he knows what's going on. If the flood barrier fails we _have_ to evacuate as soon as possible." Sam nodded and swung back around to her desk phone. Five minutes later she wrapped up her conversation.

"So do you-? Yeah, yeah, and that's it, there's nothing else you can try? Damn, okay, thanks for telling me, I'll pass it along to Rob." She hung up the phone and slid her desk chair across to Robert's station. "The fault turned out to be more complicated then they'd thought. There's no way they'll be able to fix it before the storm surge moves up the river. Now, it's no guarantee that the barrier will fail, but it's definitely a possibility now." Robert nodded slowly as he processed the information. It didn't take him long to come to a decision.

"I'm going to call in an evacuation request. We can't risk it, not if there's a chance the flood barrier won't work. I need you to go down to the police station and coordinate with them."

"What if they don't listen to me? I'm not exactly an imposing figure." It was true. Sam stood barely over five feet tall and probably didn't crack a hundred pounds. She pulled her brown hair into a pony tail and went for her coat as Robert snorted.

"I'm sure they'll listen; they're not stupid. Let's just hope they don't have any murders to solve too quickly."

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><p>As it happened, however, they did. Almost five minutes after the station called in the evacuation request a body was reported in the East End. No name or murder weapon, and he had a gun with him that hadn't been fired, despite the fact that he'd obviously been attacked from the front. The crime scene had been sealed off already by some uniforms, but the CID officers had yet to get there. The heavy rain pushed inward by the approaching surge had been making traffic a nightmare, and minor flooding had already begun in some of the city's more low-lying areas. Pressure was rapidly increasing on the emergency services and police, leaving no time to spare, and with the potential failure of the barrier and coordinating the evacuation, that pressure was only going to increase exponentially.<p>

Lestrade was busy yelling into his phone when Sam arrived at the police station. "What are you talking about? I only need twenty minutes to get down there and look at the crime scene, I can't wait. I know you need everyone you can get to help, but they already have the scene cordoned off, and we can't just leave the guy lying there." His boss, on the other end of the line, responded and finally the inspector relented. "Yes sir, alright, I'll send Sergeant Donovan down there." Lestrade hung up the phone and turned to face Sam. "Can you give me just a minute? I'm waiting for someone to get here, I need his help if I'm going to be so bloody busy today." Sam didn't want to wait, but she agreed. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said a minute, and not much after that a very tall, dark haired man arrived at the station.

"What do you need my help for, there's nothing unusual about this," he said. The inspector gave a long suffering sigh and handed him the file.

"I need you to go with Sergeant Donovan to the crime scene because I have to stay here and help with all the accidents the weather has been causing. I'd go if I could, but my boss feels otherwise." Sam coughed.

"Um, excuse me, sir." Lestrade looked surprised. He'd forgotten that she was even in the room. "My name's Samantha Robertson, I work with the Storm Tide Warning Service. I'm afraid you're about to get a lot busier. We've put in a request for the government to issue an evacuation order for the city of London. I've been sent here to inform you; as soon as the order is issued you'll have to start getting everyone out." Lestrade's stress level was ratcheting up fast.

"Why are they ordering an evacuation?"

"Because of the flood barrier." When the others looked confused, she elaborated. "There's a storm surge moving in from the north of Scotland, a massive one; it's the largest on record. Normally, what would happen in this situation is that the Thames flood barrier would be lifted to block the surge and keep the river from flooding the city. But there's a problem; there's a fault in the wiring of the barrier, and they don't know if they can fix it on time. If they can't, there's an extremely high chance that the barrier will either malfunction or won't come up at all, and if that happens the river will flood the city the moment the storm surge hits. We have to start evacuating people now, as soon as the order gets through, or we'll run out of time." Lestrade swore and turned back to her.

"How long do we have before the storm gets here? There's a murder scene to process and clear up." There was slightly over two and a half hours until the surge would sweep up the river and hit the broken barrier. The police force would need all hands on deck to even begin _attempting_ to evacuate London's massive population in that short amount of time. Lestrade turned to Sherlock and spoke so bluntly that even the detective didn't bother to argue.

"You and Donovan go down to the crime scene and get everything processed. Get back here as fast as possible." Sam spoke up when he was finished.

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think that's safe. With the traffic the way it is they'll be pushing their limit just to get out there and back without even looking at the scene. If they get caught in the flood they could be killed." Sherlock spoke up with a wry smile.

"Don't worry, I have a long history of pushing my limit. This case isn't that complicated; we can get there and get finished in time." Sam could tell that he was obstinate, but he was certainly not the only one with that personality trait.

"If you insist on going, I'm coming with you." Lestrade protested, but she cut him off. "I study these storms for a living. If you're going to risk your life you're going to need someone with you who knows how to keep you alive. You do your job, and I'll do mine." Reluctantly, Sherlock and Lestrade agreed and so Sam accompanied Sally and the detective down to the East End.

As he had predicted, the crime was easy to solve. They could get the body's identity when they got him back to the morgue, and as they prepared to cart him off, Sally finished processing it while Sherlock took care of his area of expertise.

"He knew his killer. He had a gun but didn't use it even when the killer got close enough to stab him in the chest. So, he knew him, but they didn't just run into each other; they were meeting here, otherwise he wouldn't have brought the gun along with him." He turned the dead man's wrist over and pulled his sleeve back, exposing a tattoo on the lower inside of his right arm. "He was in the mafia. Chances are he was killed by someone in a rival organization. It was probably a staged meeting just to kill him. If we can figure out which gang he was working for we'll have a good lead on his murderer." Sherlock finished up his spiel just as Sam got a call on her cell phone. It was Robert.

"There's a problem. The pressure in the depression increased and it swung south quicker than we thought it would. The storm surge is moving in right now."


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sighed and bit her lip. "Have they issued the evacuation order yet? We need to start moving _now_ to get the people out. Did they manage to fix the flood barrier?"

"Yes to the first, they've started clearing out the city beginning with the lowest lying areas. As for the second…" He trailed off. They hadn't managed to fix it. The barrier wouldn't rise, and London would flood. Sam snapped the phone shut and turned back to Sally and Sherlock.

"We need to leave. Now. The storm surge is moving in much quicker than we thought it would and they can't fix the faulty wiring in the barrier; it's coming in right now, and they can't lift the flood barrier. If we don't leave we'll be trapped, or we'll drown."

"We just need a bit more time."

"We don't have any more time!" Sam shouted. "We have got to go. They've begun evacuating the city already, and we're an hour short of the time we thought we'd have. The East End is one of the lowest lying areas in London, and it's where the sea walls are the weakest. The moment this surge hits this going to be one of the first areas that floods." Sally decided that she'd heard enough to convince her and spoke to the scene at large.

"Okay everybody, we need to get the body out of here and finish photographing the crime scene. Any non-essential personnel, leave _now_. Everyone else, get moving; let's get out of here as fast as possible." She turned to Sherlock. "If you're finished you should go too."

"No. I need to get as good a look at the scene as possible. Once it floods any residual evidence will be destroyed and I don't want to miss anything important." Sally rolled her eyes but long experience told her that it was useless to try and change Sherlock's mind.

"Go quick, then." Even with the fastest efforts of the officers the storm surge was at their doorstep by the time they'd finished the processing. The Thames rose rapidly under the force of the tide and the storm, and by the time they'd cleared up the scene the few people that were left were already up to their ankles in river water. "Come on, we need to get out of here before the road is too flooded to drive on." Sally, Sam, and Sherlock sloshed through the ever-rising water to the police car, but they were too late; already, the floodwaters made the narrow, aged roads impassable.

"There's no way we're going to be able to make it through that," Sam said. She turned to the other two. "How good are your mental maps?" Sherlock gave a small grin.

"Excellent," he replied.

"Good. We need to find someplace to take shelter until the surge passes; it's only going to get worse from here, and there's no telling how high the water will get. Where's the nearest building with at least a first story?" All the buildings around the crime scene were one-level, rickety houses and businesses. The only way they'd survive in one of those was by sitting on the roof until the floodwaters receded.

"The nearest one is on Bradford Street. There's an old abandoned butcher's with a first story. It's four streets over."

"We'll need to move quickly to make it there," Sally said. "How high will the water go?"

"Um, it depends on where the land is above the sea level and the depth of the water." Sam found herself shouting over the noise of the surge, the rain, and the wind. The water had reached their calves by now, but  
>Sam was so small that it was almost to her knees and she was threatening to lose her balance. "This area's so low-lying, and the surge is coming off of the river instead of the sea, so it could easily go as high as ten feet in this area. We need to move now if we're going to make it to that building."<p>

The going got rougher as they forced their way up the road, until finally the rapidly moving water rose so high that it almost knocked Sam off her feet, and the only thing that stopped her from falling was Sherlock's quick reaction time. He caught her by the arm and pulled her back up to her feet.

"Thanks for that," she gasped, heart racing. She laughed faintly. "I'll bet the water could go up another foot before you'd have any trouble."

"There are some advantages to being six feet tall, yes." The water was getting dangerously high as they forced their way closer to Bradford Street, until finally it got to the point where Sherlock had to hold onto Sam continually to stop her from being swept under and drowned, and Sally was beginning to have the same problem. By the time they'd forced their way to Bradford, the water was up to Sherlock's waist and level with the bottom of Sam's ribcage. The sound and ferocity of the storm suddenly took a jump, and Sam yelled,

"It's the main body of the surge hitting the river! Hang on to something now, because things are about to get rough!" And things did. The tide combined with the naturally occurring surge came storming up Bradford Street, a powerful uptick in speed of the water, nearly knocking Sherlock clean off his feet even as he held on to a brick protruding from the wall with one hand and Sam with the other. Sally was knocked backwards into the detective, but he was able to brace himself enough to withstand the brunt of the river's assault. The water rose, unrelenting, and Sherlock knew that if they didn't get down Bradford to the abandoned shop soon it would cover Sam's head. If he had been on his own, his immense height would have bought him an easy ten minutes extra, but with Sam and Sally both their time was running short.

Just as they made it to the butcher's building, the water rose too high for Sam to breath. Grunting with the effort, Sherlock seized her around the middle and lifted her, pulling her head up above the water level while Sally struggled to pull the door open against the swift current. The water was too high for them not to hold themselves onto something, and the force of the surge threatened to slam the door shut on anyone unfortunate enough to be passing through when it closed. Sherlock, still pulling Sam up as high as he could manage, braced himself against the wall and put his free hand against the door, pressing it open.

"Go!" he shouted to Sally. She got into the building as fast as she could, and after she was clear, Sherlock shifted his position and pushed Sam through, hollering, "Hold your breath until I get in there!" She nodded and was swept through the door, doing her best to tread water until the lanky detective could get through. The water level in the butcher's shop was just as high as the level outside and would continue to match it until the water stopped rising, but the deadly current was significantly reduced, deflected by the metal door and brick wall, and the piercing rain was blocked by the stone roof.

Sherlock gathered his wits, knowing he'd need them to get through the door without serious injury, and slid himself carefully through the frame. However, the moment his hold against the current was weakest, an especially strong patch of the tide slammed into the door with unprecedented strength, forcing the door closed against Sherlock's will. The metal latch delivered a swift cut to the side of his right arm and hand, and he yelled in pain as the tide slammed the door shut.

They were inside the building, but they certainly weren't out of danger; the water rose inside the building just as it did out, and it increased fast as the very center of the surge pushed its way up the river Thames. Sam was now treading water as best she could, and even Sally was forced onto her very tip toes to keep her head over the level of the murky water. In the gloom of the lightless building with the black cloud cover outside even Sherlock struggled to locate the stairs to the upper story. Finally, he spotted them in the far corner of the building. He seized Sam again, hefting her up as high as he could manage, but the water was now up to his chest and just kept rising. They had to reach the second level soon or they would be in deep trouble, in more ways than one.

Finally, blessedly, they reached the staircase and the first floor. When they got to the top, gasping for breath, Sherlock set Sam down on the floor again.

"I'm glad you hardly weigh anything," he half-joked. "Otherwise I might've dropped you. How long before the surge moves away?" Sam coughed out some residual water.

"Well, we've definitely hit the center of it already. From here it should take another couple of hours to move away entirely, and then we just have to wait for the floodwaters to recede. Or for somebody to come find us." She stopped short when she saw Sherlock's hand. "You're hurt." Sherlock peeled his sleeve back.

"It looks worse than it is," he responded. "The blood is mixing with the water and that makes it look like it's bleeding a lot more." He was right, but it was still a vicious cut, almost six inches long, and deep toward the wrist. He searched around the upper story for something to bandage it with, and his gaze came across an old rag. He cut it into one long strip with his pocket knife and wrapped it around the wound.

"Are you sure that's safe?" Sally asked him. "I mean, you have no idea what could be living on that thing." Sherlock gave a harsh laugh.

"I don't think it's too much of a risk; it's already a cut from a rusty metal door that's been submerged in river water. I doubt there's much of anything _not_ living in there already." Sam spoke up on the point he'd raised.

"What are we going to do if you get an infection? It could be a couple of days before the water drops or we get rescued by someone. You could get tetanus from that thing." He shrugged wearily and finished wrapping it.

"Let's deal with that if it happens." It was, as Sam had predicted, another two hours before the surge wheeled its way down to the southeastern coast and left the city alone, leaving a trail of rain behind it. Night began to fall soon after, making potential rescue unlikely, and despite being soaked through to the other side, the three managed to fall asleep, even Sherlock. He wouldn't have normally, but he knew that he needed to in this instance because he had to keep his strength up. The next day, he woke up with a fever.


	3. Chapter 3

It started out small, just a tinge of warmth on the back of his neck and on his forehead, but by the time the sun rose behind the clouds, their fears from the previous day had been realized. It wasn't tetanus, but he had a full on, raging infection and no way to fight it until someone rescued them from where they'd been stranded. A few hours after the symptoms started, he'd developed an extremely high fever and he felt like his wrist and hand were on fire.

They took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves to dissipate the heat, but it didn't do a whole lot of good. His temperature kept going up, and even though it seemed impossible he got paler than normal and started shivering profusely. Sam found another rag in the same area as the one he'd wrapped his cut in and dipped it in the water that rose almost to the floor of the upper story. She placed it across his forehead and took hold of the hand that he'd cut. She started unwrapping the makeshift bandage; the bleeding had stopped, and containing the cut was actually worse for Sherlock than letting it stay covered, especially with a dirty rag.

She winced when she saw the scratch. It was nearly half a foot long, and was starting to get discolored from the infection and the rag. She re-dipped the rag across his head and replaced it when he woke up.

"Well, I feel wonderful," he commented sarcastically. "Where's Sally?"

"She's on the roof, looking out for someone to rescue us. There's a hatch over on the other side that leads out. We've been taking turns looking for help." She moved off to replace Sally, who came down the cleverly concealed entrance and came to the detective's side.

"Well, there's been no sign of anyone today," she said, "and we can't call anybody because none of our cell phones survived the water. We need to get help quick; I don't know what it is you've caught but it only took half a day to give you a massive fever, and we might not get out of here until tomorrow or the day after." Sherlock opened his mouth to respond and got about two words out before he was hit by a violent coughing spell. He lurched forward and Sally caught him before he tipped over.

As the day went on, no sign of help arrived from any quarter, nor did the floodwaters show anything more than slight indications of receding. Night fell once again, and Sherlock's condition steadily worsened. There was who knew how many different types of infections fighting their way through him at once and they had been left completely untreated for over a day now. His breathing got shallow and the fever inched its way upward, until finally they took his shirt off completely in an attempt to relieve some of the heat coming off of his body. He was still conscious, but he was so dizzy they couldn't move him upright or he would simply topple over. The two women kept trading off watch through the night, one on the roof, one next to the detective, and that night neither of them got any sleep.

Sam didn't quite believe her ears when she heard a boat approaching; it was moving on toward evening for the second full day, and rain was threatening to break on the city again. She listened carefully, hardly daring to believe herself, but it was true. There was a boat in the area. She scoured the murky water on all sides, calling down through the hatch,

"There's a boat coming! Someone's almost here!" Sally breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Sherlock. Between the fever and the dizziness he was almost semi-conscious, so she shook him gently to get his attention.

"There's somebody on their way. Can you get up enough to make it out?" It wasn't a light prospect; to get through the hatch he'd have to climb a rickety fold-down ladder, something that he couldn't do in his present condition. They would have to divine some other way to get Sherlock out of the building.

On the roof, Sam hollered and waved as a small boat came into view, pulling up next to her.

"How many are here?" The man piloting it called out.

"Three, but there's one man who's really ill, there's no way we'll be able to get him up to the roof." Sam pursed her lips as she struggled to come up with an alternative exit strategy. "Wait, though, there are some windows on the roadside of the first floor, they're almost level with the water. We can get through those." The man nodded his agreement and pulled the boat around to the side of the shop that faced the street and Sam scampered back down the ladder, running over to the mostly broken panes and throwing them open. Their rescuer pulled his boat directly up to the side of the building, so that all they had to do was step out and it was no more than three feet to rescue.

Between the two of them Sally and Sam managed to get Sherlock on his feet, but it would be trouble getting him through the window frame. As the pilot moored his boat against the window to stop it from drifting, Sally called out to him,

"Hey, are you reasonably strong?" The man nodded. "Good. We need your help to get him through the window. He's too tall for either of us to manage it." Between them and the mystery man, they slowly got Sherlock through the window and onto the floor of the small boat. Sam and Sally joined them easily and soon, after nearly two days and after the largest storm of the record, they were rescued. However, they certainly weren't in the clear. They had to get Sherlock to a hospital as soon as possible, and they had to let people know they were alive.

The cut on Sherlock's arm was looking even worse than it had the day before, and the infection was going stronger than ever. "Where's the nearest hospital?" Sally shouted over the noise of the boat's motor.

"There's a small one on the north of town that didn't get flooded," the man replied. "It was really bad. The evacuation helped, but even with that we've been getting a lot of people out of the water since Tuesday. Luckily, most of them have been fine, but we've had to take all the injured or ill to that one; it's the only one that avoided the storm."

"It must be putting a lot of pressure on it," Sam commented. The man nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, they've practically moved every doctor in London up there just to get people through faster." Sally wondered if John was there. He probably was; that would be a good thing, because unless he was completely unconscious, John was the only person Sally had ever seen Sherlock let anywhere near him in a medical capacity. It was a twenty minute ride by boat to the hospital, which was rushed with activity. Because the storm surge had moved in so much quicker than they had anticipated, the evacuation order hadn't had the time to take full effect; it was better than if nothing had been done, of course, but it still made for a chaotic situation.

As Sally had predicted, since Sherlock was still conscious when they arrived at the hospital, he immediately began to raise hell at any attempt to get anywhere near him. While Sam tried to talk him down, Sally went to look for a phone to call Lestrade. He had to know that she was actually alive, and that the other two were as well. Luckily, she did one better; she found Lestrade in the hospital's main hallway, talking with John. She hurried up to them.

"Sir!" Both men looked up at her voice, extremely relieved. Lestrade spoke to her as she approached.

"Thank God, are you okay Donovan? And how are the other two?"

"I'm fine, and so is the other woman, the short one. Sherlock's not doing so well; he cut his hand during the storm and caught a pretty bad infection from it."

"Where is he now?" John asked, looking alarmed. Sally gave a half-smile.

"Doing his best to stop anyone from getting within three feet of him." John rolled his eyes at the detective's obstinate behavior, but it was obvious that he was immensely relieved his friend was still awake.

"I'd better go see if I can give them a hand with him." He hurried off to relieve the harried physician that had been tasked with getting Sherlock Holmes to cooperate; that poor guy was going to need some help.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time John got there, Sherlock had fallen so ill that he was attempting to resist treatment just by glaring. He fell into another coughing fit and was slipping into unconsciousness. Still, however, he did his damndest to stop anyone there from touching him. John rushed up.

"Hey, Sherlock, listen to me, okay?" Sherlock's glare to him was only slightly less withering.

"John?"

"Yeah, it's me. Now come on, you have to let me treat you. We don't know what you've caught and we need to clean your wound." He turned to the doctor who had been wrestling with the detective earlier. "Where is the wound? We need to test for what he might have in it." The other doctor looked incredulous, and held up the wicked cut on his wrist.

"Look at this thing! What _hasn't_ he caught from this?" Sherlock tried to pull his arm out of the doctor's grasp, but since John had shown up, his aggression level had dropped somewhat. John winced at the sight of the scratch; it was six inches long and several different colors, and it had already begun to seal. They'd have to reopen it, take a blood sample, and clean it out; a process that was, to say the least, painful. Sherlock tried to say something, but breathing in wasn't working for him at that juncture and he succumbed to another spate of heavy coughing.

John caught him before he could fall backwards and was shocked by his temperature. The heat was practically radiating off of his chest, and his forehead and neck were even worse. Despite Sherlock's resistance, John managed to put an IV in his arm and hooked it up to a fever reducer and a general-purpose antibacterial medication. Now for the nasty part: opening the cut back up. They had no choice; they had to clean it properly and chances were Sherlock would need stitches to close it back up. They had decided to spare him yet another needle poke and take the necessary blood sample directly from the cut before they reclosed it.

"Hey Sherlock?" The detective gave John a look that clearly conveyed the message 'I really hate you right now'. John smiled at the glare before continuing. "We have to open up your cut and clean it out. This is going to hurt." He hadn't been lying. When they opened the cut, Sherlock, even in his half-conscious state, let out a yell that contained some words John didn't even know he could pronounce. And certainly none that he would repeat in polite company.

"Was that entirely necessary?" he shouted, in his usual semi-sarcastic way.

"Yes, it was. We have to take a blood sample and then I'll stitch it shut. Depending on what you have, you'll probably be out of here in a couple of days, max."

"I'm not staying." John crossed his arms.

"Oh, aren't you? I dare you to get up and walk over to that bathroom right now." Sherlock thought about it for a second before delivering another death glare in John's direction. John finished taking the blood sample and stitched and wrapped Sherlock's wound. When the results got back from the test, John flipped open the folder and just about yelled some curse words of his own.

"Do you realize that you managed to catch _three_ different bacterial infections? Three?" Sherlock grinned, still half-asleep but fortunately no longer about to pass out.

"That's because I don't do things halfway, do I?" John rolled his eyes and replaced the general antibacterial with a more specific, heavy-duty medication and kept him on the fever reducer.

"Never have, have you? So, you should still be out of here in a day or two and then we'll give you another medicine to take for a couple of weeks. Right now, though, all you need to do is get some proper sleep and count yourself lucky that you didn't get killed." John stopped for a moment. "I'm glad you're okay; I was worried about you out there." He reached forward and gave the taller man a quick grasp on the shoulder before leaving the room.

Of course, the moment Sherlock could stand without falling over, he refused to stay in the hospital for another minute, and in no time at all he was back at Baker Street causing trouble and mixing chemicals together. It took nearly a week, but finally the city managed to pump all the floodwater out and clean everything up and after they were done and set for some clear weather, Sam came to visit.

"I just had a minute before I have to get to work, but I wanted to say thanks for stopping me from getting swept away."

"It was no problem. If you're going to keep this job, though, you should consider getting taller." Sherlock couldn't resist putting one in at the end.

"Yeah, whatever; don't I wish." Sam laughed, shook her head, and left for work. Quite frankly, it would seem boring after the largest storm on the record books, but whatever.

When she had gone, Sherlock and John relaxed back into their usual routine of doing a whole lot of nothing in between bouts of fighting and shooting and running. Sherlock's coughing fits gradually subsided and the antibacterials got rid of the fever and dizziness. Remarkably, the cut healed up with no scar and John took the stitches out three weeks later. And that was that. It was an astonishingly calm ending to such a perilous adventure.

They even solved the case. As Sherlock had predicted, the victim had been killed by a rival mafia's hit man, who had used the incoming storm as an attempt to hide the evidence, figuring that the body would be washed away by the flood. Sherlock managed to track him down just a week and a half after the water receded, once everyone had come back to the city. He even managed to punch him out with his right hand.

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><p><strong>AN: Woot, whole story posted in under an hour. Yessss... So, tell me what you thought. Seriously, I want to know. And if you spot a science error I'll give you an internet high-five. Once again, hope y'all have an awesome New Year and I hope you enjoyed the most random story idea I've ever had. ^-^**


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